| Title |
Legal knowledge, needs, and assistance seeking among HIV positive and negative women in Umlazi, South Africa
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
BMC Public Health, January 2016
|
| DOI | 10.1186/s12914-016-0077-z |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Lauren M. Hill, Suzanne Maman, David Holness, Dhayendre Moodley |
| Abstract |
The rights of women and people living with HIV (PLHIV) are protected under South African law, yet there is a gap in the application of these laws. While there are numerous systemic and social barriers to women's and PLHIV's exercise of their legal rights and rights to access social services, there has been little effort to document these barriers as well as legal needs and knowledge in this context. 1480 HIV-positive and HIV-negative women recruited from an antenatal clinic in Umlazi Township completed a questionnaire on legal knowledge, experience of legal issues, assistance seeking for legal issues, and barriers to seeking assistance. We compared the legal knowledge and experience of legal issues of HIV-positive and HIV-negative women, and described assistance seeking and barriers to assistance seeking among all women. Both HIV-positive and HIV-negative women had high levels of knowledge of their legal rights. There were few important differences in legal knowledge and experience of legal issues by HIV status. The most common legal issues women experienced were difficulty obtaining employment (11 %) and identification documents (7 %). A minority of women who had ever experienced a legal issue had sought assistance for this issue (38 %), and half (50 %) of assistance sought was from informal sources such as family and friends. Women cited lack of time and government bureaucracy as the major barriers to seeking assistance. These results indicate few differences in legal knowledge and needs between HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in this context, but rather legal needs common among women of reproductive age. Legal knowledge may be a less important barrier to seeking assistance for legal issues than time, convenience, and cost. Expanding the power of customary courts to address routine legal issues, encouragement of pro bono legal assistance, and introduction of legal navigators could help to address these barriers. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 29 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 29 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher | 4 | 14% |
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 4 | 14% |
| Student > Postgraduate | 3 | 10% |
| Student > Master | 3 | 10% |
| Student > Bachelor | 2 | 7% |
| Other | 4 | 14% |
| Unknown | 9 | 31% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Medicine and Dentistry | 5 | 17% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 4 | 14% |
| Social Sciences | 4 | 14% |
| Psychology | 3 | 10% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 1 | 3% |
| Other | 2 | 7% |
| Unknown | 10 | 34% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 January 2016.
All research outputs
#22,759,452
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from BMC Public Health
#16,436
of 17,511 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#345,551
of 403,904 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Public Health
#256
of 273 outputs
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